I get paid to deliver pizza, not to handle family arguments

[BowserKoopa1]

Yesterday I made a delivery to a house. I knocked twice, no answer. The lady I call tells me her boys are home and that she ordered pizza for them. Ok, so why the fuck don't they answer the goddam door? Are they afraid of Mr Bogeyman or something? As I'm talking to her on the phone, a truck pulls into the driveway and I tell her that a truck just pulled up. She pays it no heed and tells me she's going to call her boys and tell them to answer the door. Here's where it gets interesting
The teenage boy who gets out of the truck tells me that his mom is on the phone and is pissed off at him because she thinks he is not home or he's not supposed to be driving that truck (I honestly don't know what the situation is, I just know she was upset with him) He tells me he wants me to tell her that he is not home.
Me: Dude, I don't have time for this.
STINK (Stupid Teenage Idiot Numbskull Kid-STINK.... And yeah I just made that up : Please, dude. I'll give you some extra money.
Me: I really don't wanna get involved in this.
STINK: Just tell her I'm not here.
Me: Are you serious?
STINK: Come on, dude. I'll give you a bigger tip.
I honestly didn't care about a bigger tip, I just wanted to collect the money and leave, but the mom wanted to talk to me. So they handed me their phone and their mom hung up. She calls me back on my phone. At this point I didn't know what else to do, so I lied for them in the hopes that the mom would just accept what I said and let me leave.
Mom: Is there a truck there?
Me: No Maam.
Mom: I'm confused, I thought you said there was a truck?
Me: Lemme check again.
I put the phone down and start getting irritated with STINK and his brother.
Me: She knows a truck is here.
STINK: No, just tell her its not me. Tell her I'm not home.
Me: But I already told her.
STINK: Please dude? I'll give you a bigger tip. (3rd time he's told me this)
Me: This is ridiculous! I just get paid to deliver, not to handle family affairs!
STINK: I'll give you some extra money (4th time) Just please tell her I'm not here.
Me: I don't know what else to say.
STINK: Tell her no truck is in the driveway.
Me: She knows there's a truck in the driveway.
STINK: Tell her that, I'll give you more money (5th time).
Me (God help me) Sorry about that, Maam. I see a truck in the driveway.
Mom: A truck?
Me: Its a Chevy, that's all I know.
I don't quite remember everything that she said, but she started pumping me with questions, and I finally had had enough.
Me: Maam, I'm sorry, I don't know what to make of all this, but my job is to deliver pizzas. I cannot get involved in this.
Mom: That's fine, I understand.
Yeah sure, I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if she had called and complained on me. And for what? Because STINK here was obviously doing something he wasn't supposed to, and him and his brother and mom were all trying to drag me into a family argument which had absolutely nothing at all to do with me?
I finally got off the phone with her and told the kids in a somehwat rude manner that I did not have time for games, and I told them that I didn't want them to call the store and try to complain on me either. Not the right thing to do, but they made me very mad, and I don't appreciate being drawn into a family argument. How many of you guys woulda gotten mad too? I couldn't just drive away either because the mom wanted to talk to me, and they hadn't even signed the credit card slip. I think I might've given them a scare without actually meaning to. I guess they got scared and thought that if they did complain on me that I was going to come back to their house and get them. Obviously I wouldn't do that, and I didn't threaten them, I just told them I didn't want to get involved, and I told them in a very serious tone.
So how many of you would've done the same as me or even gotten mad at them? FYI, there was no complaint, as well there shouldn't be as I didn't do anything wrong.

[Ghel]

Did they ever sign the slip? And did they give you the good tip they promised? (Not that those things justify drawing you into their family squabble.)

I wasn't present for this, but my boss told me about a couple that came in to apply for a mortgage the other day. They couldn't decide whether they wanted just the wife to apply, or if they should apply jointly. The husband wanted to apply jointly, even though he didn't have any income, but the wife wanted to apply by herself. My boss couldn't suggest either way (since that's against regulations), and the couple were just butting heads over it. They weren't really arguing in front of her, though. She went to copy some documents, to give them some privacy, and when she came back they were sitting in her office, each with their arms crossed and facing away from each other. This happened twice before they were able to come to a compromise.

[Captain Trips]

My suggestion:

"Ma'am? The truck pulled in as I was talking to you, someone got out and asked me to tell you he isn't home. Now, I don't care what's going on in your family, I'm just trying to deliver this pizza. I need to get paid or I'm taking it back to the store. You and you son will need to work this out yourselves."

[EricKei]

I had a related thing happen to me once when I was delivering for "Unclothed Pizzapie" ... I tried to deliver to a house and ended up waiting around, knocking and ringing for a good five minutes or more. Finally, the lady who lived there showed up, pushing a stroller. It turns out that the pizza she had ordered was for her son, who was HOME the whole time, but, "Oh, he doesn't answer the door."

...

Makes me wonder, if she KNEW he was like this, why did she leave the house just after placing the order (the timing was such that this was just about the only explanation)?!

[PepperElf]

indeed. it's not your job to solve their issues.

they need to grow up and handle them themselves

[emax4]

AFter so many tries or one minute, you should be able to do a police knock without stopping.

[HotelMinion]

Oh god, I hate it when people push you into their stupid personal problems. Unless you're taling to a therapist keep your it to yourself. A few years ago some STINKs wanted to play some stupid prank on another, and told me to hide her SHOE. "No!" I said. It ended up with them shoving the shoe at me and I was shoving it right back. Luckily the girl came back to claim it and they all had a belly laugh. Haha, -_-

[MoonCat]

I like Captain Trips' response. I would have done something similar. I refuse to get in the middle of family stupidity. The main problem I have with this is when some family is at odds over whether/when/how to place a death notice for someone. When that happens I stick very closely to company policy, which is to insist that the funeral home place it. That way they have to work out their nonsense without my involvement.

[raudf]

"I'm sorry, I'm not a psychologist, nor a psychiatrist. I repair appliances, not families," to quote one of the techs at Monkey Wards when a customer tried to drag him into a family dispute. Dad got a kick out of that customer complaint when he took the call over from me. Saturdays always brought out crap like this, which our techs were instructed that if it was "loud or rising in pitch," to leave at once. Again, not in the mental health field.

Family disputes are like time bombs with the timer tapped off so you can't read it. You know it's gonna blow up on you. You just don't know WHEN.

[blas]

It's just about as bad as people who bring their issues out in public. Love it, love it.

And I speak from personal experience. Growing up, my mother, who unfortunately picked up a few bad habbits from her grandmother who raised her, thought it was not only appropriate, but a good idea, to lash out at my brother and I while we were doing grocery shopping (and we weren't allowed to stay home to avoid it). Seriously, all it took was one twitch to get her going, and the whole store could hear her screaming at him or me, "This attitude of yours is going to stop. And it's going to stop NOW. Do you understand? DO YOU? I'm so sick and tired of your attitude and your blahblahlblahblahlblahlbah!!!"

When we were younger, my dad used to try to stick up for us and say that people were staring, she needed to quiet down, and she'd yell "NO! They need to stop doing this, and I'm not going to stop until they understand!!" or she'd just get louder and louder and louder.

When my brother and I got older, we'd tell her people were staring and she was making a scene, and my delusional mother would bark back, "NO! YOU'RE making the scene! Everyone knows YOU'VE done something wrong!" I think a time or two, she actually out loud said that she thought people were probably proud of her for putting her kids in their place.

Not to mention, I've told this story before by the by, my mom and my biggest fight was at a Sears out in a mall in Washington when we were on vacation.

The guy I was dating at the time made the grave mistake of calling our cell (this was before most people all had their own phones), my mother absolutely hated him, and while I was desperately trying to tell him I'd call him when we got home, I'm sorry but I can't talk right now, she came charging at me, screaming at me to give her that phone, GIVE IT NOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!! GOD DAMMIT WHEN WE GET HOME YOU'RE GROUNDED! DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHEN I TELL YOU NOT TO DO SOMETHING?!!!?! and at that point, I was just trying to get away from her, walking away, pretending to ignore her.........I had this angry little 5 foot tall redheaded psycho running after me, screaming her head off at how I was grounded, had a bad attitude, had no respect......I ignored her as long as I could and tried to walk away from her as fast as possible. At one point, literally every employee and fellow customer were staring at her chasing me. She did finally catch me, she was grabbing my arm and continuing to scream at me. I did my best to never shout back at her and keep my cool.

Sorry I had to bring that up, but damn, I feel for anyone who gets stuck in the middle of family fights.

I also had to deal with that a little bit the one time that I met my ex boyfriend's ex wife, and we were all doing some shopping at Wal-Mart before they were going to do pictures with their kids, and my ex bf is really hard on his kids, especially his son, and his ex wife isn't............and I was just humiliated when he started screaming at his son and his ex wife grabs the kid and starts screaming at him that look at what he's doing to his son, doesn't he realize his son thinks he hates him?

Oh thank God I'm out of that crazy relationship now.